Monday, August 27, 2007

We were at my cousin’s wedding out past Gimli on Saturday. It went well and the kids had fun. The wedding was at 1 and the dinner wasn’t until 6:30 so we were going to pop over to Gimli to kill some time betwixt. We found out that they had planned family photos and my mom brought some social food so we ended up going to my uncle’s place in between and then popped into a craft place in Arborg that was having a sale.

The hall in Riverton was lovely and the food was really quite good. There were no bad speeches and they gave out matches and candles. I could see the gleam in my son’s eye as he was almost lighting the little candle from the centerpiece candle.

My daughter was dancing the whole night and I got to expose both kids to the Butterfly – this is a dance when three people link up and dance along slowly and occasionally break into a flurry where the two people on the wings take turns spinning the center person between them. I learned early on as a child to be sure to be on the wing and not in the center.

Sunday, we spent a great deal of time raking up the crabapples and then mowing the lawn. Then we did groceries and I popped over to my folks to see if they needed help moving furniture as they are redoing their kitchen floor but my brother had already finished by the time I got there.Tonight we’re going to pop out to a few places to look for a newer car.

I got a few small packages from ebay last week – a few more Heroclix figs from some of the older sets. I painted some more fairies and worked on the planes. I drilled the bases to hold the magentic pickups and worked on the smoke and flame trails.

Monday, August 20, 2007

This weekend my brother came over and helped me change the front fascia on the roof. It was in a bit of rough shape. We’ve been putting off a few repairs as we hope to be able to expand the house in the next few years and this will necessitate getting a new roof.

Since I had to get paint anyways, for the fascia, I picked enough to paint the trim as well. That’s the last two summer chores I had left on my list. I still need to finish the trim and touch up the fence, but I’m backdating that until after Wincon.

I’m at that crux point for Wincon. Time-wise, I’m in a good spot for the games. I like to do something big and impressive each year. This year we have a lot of little improvements that are pretty impressive but no real accessible show-stopper. The Canvas Eagles will be pretty impressive but it’s a bit over the curve for some and the Fairy Meat will be impressive but not as visual as I would like. The live action Devil Bunny Needs a Ham would be a show-stopper, but we’ve already done it before years ago. I had hoped to upsize RoboRally but may not be able to do so in the time left. I’m still borderline about attempting it. It would eat up more of my time and make a few more late nights, but it would certainly be worth it. To me anyways.

Friday, August 17, 2007

This is Gencon weekend. It started yesterday and, in a perfect world, I would be there. Gencon is a huge game convention that used to take over MECCA in downtown Milwaukee. Yearly we would make our annual pilgrimage to MECCA to see what were the new games coming out, meet the game designers, be able to purchase the new games or even find some obscure copies of old games, and most of all to game.

A few years back, Gencon moved out to Indianapolis and we had a second child. These two factors combined to make it unfeasible for us to make it down anymore. Now that the kids are getting older, we have hopes to make it down again sometime – while there is still a hobby for it.

I highly recommend it to anyone who’s into gaming. Even for those who aren’t into gaming, it’s still a blast. The dealer’s room used to be a thing of beauty. There were celebrities to meet and from which to get autographs. And the gaming was something else.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The Coming of Galactus final was last night. I had the bye so I was able to skip the first round. I was torn between playing the Terrax or the Stardust. I got a nice pull – just nothing that really helped either one. I could either play a Terrax and Giant Man team or Stardust, Living Laser, Moon Knight team. I ended up going with the hard to hit, 19 defense, Stardust/LL team.

Apparently not quite hard enough to hit. I ended up losing my next two games. No Big G for me but I did get one of the maps to add to my collection. I was also able to do a bit of trading and now am only missing 10 regular figures and 8 super rares from the Avengers set. It was a fun event and a good group to play with.

I’m looking forward to the Slaves of Starro event coming at the end of September.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Two weeks ago we saw Sunshine. As a hard science fiction film is was pretty good. Avoid the actual website though if you don’t want to know who dies. There was a bit of a logic jump near the last third that didn’t click for me and made the endgame pretty odd. But in discussing it afterwards I worked it out so it’s all good then.

Last week we saw the Bourne Ultimatum. It was a fun spy action film. The only downsides were some of the jerky camera work and a throwaway line. There is a static scene with two people talking and the camera is twitching and jerking around as if the cameraman is hyped up on espressos.

I mention these as I’ve finally seen one of the Mystery Science Theatre programs. We saw Godzilla vs Megalon. I had seen this in my youth at the Hyland theatre. I remember it as being much better. Or at least less bad. It was very bad. The MST crew really helped watching this one.I remember seeing a few Godzilla films at the Hyland. Godzilla vs the Smog Monster for sure. We used to sit in the front row right over on the left side and look way up at the creatures. Good memories.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Another great pull at the Heroclix tourney on Wednesday. I got two super rares – the Colonel and the Hulk. I was going to play Terrax again but couldn’t pass up a chance to play the Hulk. I lost the first round so I switched to Terrax and the Scarlet Witch for the next two rounds to get a feel for how he plays for the final. I won my second game (against Perry) but finally lost in the third game to a Silver Surfer, Scarlet Witch, and 2 pogs. Nasty Jimmy Woo caused a solid 3 points to Terrax. I ended up getting stuck on a frenzy click vs the Surfer’s hypersonic and couldn’t recover.I might still play him on the final. It all depends on my draw that day.

I had picked up some nice bases for the planes for Canvas Eagles. I hope to have at least 6 to 8 done for Sept. People could always try some print out more on their own from this site:http://digilander.libero.it/zioprudenzio/fok-air.htmlHe has an Albatros model in 1:72, the Fokker Dr1 and D7 need to be scaled down. Someone with more photoshop skills than I can mod the ships before printing.

I read the Deadly Hallows over the long weekend. It tied up a bunch of story lines. Per my previous rant – 2 semi-major characters die, and a lot of minor characters don’t make it as well.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Two notes at the start: First, these are the two magazines, Dragon and Dungeon not the actual role-playing game itself (or even the miniature game).Second, for some this is old news already – as it was originally announced back on April 19 - http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/news/20070419a

Talk about a real blow to the stomach. Now, let me be up front and say that while I did read these both back in the day – Dragon from about issue 50 and Dungeon from its inception, I haven’t really bought either in about 100 issues. That’s close to a decade. I have picked up the occasional Dragon magazine here and there and have peeked at them in Walmart but haven’t really subscribed since back when.

Even more painful is the fact that the only reason I found out was in searching the web for info about the old D&D cartoon ads that ran back in late 70s/early 80s. I had been thinking about when I had make the change from standard board games (Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk) to RPGs and wargames. I know I had bought the second edition Dungeons & Dragons set at Eatons while in elementary – based on the ads in the backs of comic books. I’m trying to recall if that was before or after getting Attack on Moscow or Attack of the Mutants from comic ads as well. Hence my search for the ads – whether the art was Jeff Dee, Erol Otis, or Bill Willingham but I am leaning towards Jeff Dee.

The last issues will be Dragon 359 and Dungeon 150. I’ll be keeping an eye out for them. Hopefully they will rerelease the collections on CD again. They had released issues 1-250 in PDF on CD but, having most of those issues, I had failed to pick it up then. I wouldn't make that mistake again.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

I played another round of the Coming of Galactus last night. I was all set to sub in the Terrax figure from the previous set – until I opened my boosters. I got both the Living Laser and Ares. LL is reputedly a beast in this format and, not only is Ares one of the super-rares, Ares is a monster. He’s an army unto himself – but at 275 points (in a 300 point battle) he would have to be.

It was a bit of a number crunch, but I decided to go with the Ares, a pog, and the Inferno card. I easily won the first game. I won the second game through some good maneuvering and lucky rolls. The last game was down to the bitter end. It started with Ares and pog in the Xavier’s mansion ruins against Gargoyle, Giant-Man, and Iron Man. It ended up being Iron Man and Ares slugging it out and I finally defeated him on my last click. I had lost the pog in all three battles – but he had only been there for zone control and as a distraction.

When the numbers came in, there was one other person with threes wins, but I easily won on points due to keeping Ares alive. That means that I will get a bye in the final battle for Galactus and a better shot at actually pulling off a win. It’s good to see that I’m picking this back up pretty quickly. Since the big guy goes for over $200 on ebay, this would be the only way for me to get one. Well, there is always a 1 in 500 chance of pulling a ticket for one in a booster but, even with 20+ people at the final, that’s still about a 1 in 12 chance for me.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

We had started watching 24 on Friday night – but only managed to get through 5 hours on the weekend due to the barbeques – both good, but they really cut into our viewing time. So we should be finished after the long weekend instead.

We did find out that Valleycon has quietly moved their convention from Sept 21-23 to Oct 27 – 28. While this does give me an entire extra month to finish the costumes for the kids, it does kind of mess up the holidays that I already had to book back in April. Plus, the weekend it is now on will conflict with the Manitoba Comicon. So we’re a bit torn.Links: http://www.valleycon.com/ - which might have William Shatner (Denny Crane!)http://www.manitobacomiccon.com/ - which will have David Prowse and Richard Hatch

Even though it’s too hot for much else, I was able to work on a few planes – finishing the paper DVII and assembling the ERTL Spad XII. I also started work on an Airfix Avro 504K. My planes are two Central, two Allies – but they are deeply balanced towards the Central side. Once I finish the Albatros and another Spad and a Nieuport, we should be able to try Canvas Eagles.